Forgotten and rediscovered
In 1870 German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche wrote: ‘This week I listened to the St Matthew Passion three times, each time with the same feeling of immense admiration. One who has completely forgotten Christianity truly hears it here as gospel.’
Great Passion
If you look up the words ‘St Matthew Passion’ in a musical lexicon you would read something like: ‘A text set to music about the suffering, death and burial of Jezus of Nazareth, as described by the evangelist Matthew.’ Perhaps the lexicon would also explain that during the Middle Ages numerous composers throughout Europe had set this story to music and performed it during Lent, the Holy Week leading up to Easter. And that in virtually all churches and chapels throughout Europe the texts of the Evangelists were declaimed and music for the Passion played and sung (‘passio’ is the Latin word for ‘suffering’). The reader would also learn that Bach’s St Matthew Passion was just one of the many musical settings of the Passion of Christ.
Nevertheless, it is Bach’s work that belongs at the absolute pinnacle of western civilisation, comparable in stature to Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, or the plays of Shakespeare. In terms of its scope, design, technique, expression and complexity, the work overshadowed all other church music of even Bach himself, let alone
any other composer. When Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena wrote ‘zur groß Bassion’ (‘Belongs to the great Passion’) on a score for the basso continuo voice for his St Matthew Passion, everyone in the family knew what she meant. For that family too, there was just one ‘Great Passion’. It is clear from the fresh copy that Bach made of the work nine years after its first performance (on Good Friday 1727) that he treasured this Passion as his finest work. He copied the score with the utmost elegance and precision, using – significantly – two colours of ink. He used dark brown ink for most of the notes, and red for Bible texts of the Evangelist and for the chorale ‘O Lamm Gottes unschuldig’ in the first chorus. When the score later suffered damage, Bach repaired it with new strips of paper on which he rewrote the lost pieces of music.
Quiet drama
The overall structure of the St Matthew Passion is comparable to his earlier St John Passion. The main part of the text is taken from the Gospel according to Matthew, recounted by the Evangelist in a kind of spoken song (recitative), invariably in a tenor voice. These recitatives are interweaved with contemplative arias, choruses and chorales. By tradition, the words of Christ are entrusted to a bass voice, as are those of Pontius Pilate. In addition to the chorales, the choir sings an expansive opening chorus in which mourning crowds urge the daughters of Jerusalem to join in the lamentation. The choruses depict the ‘turba’
(the Latin word for ‘crowd’) who are here the servants of the high priest seeking Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and later in the story warming themselves by a fire alongside Peter.
Bach takes advantage of the many opportunities in this work for musical rhetoric, word painting and symbolism. One spectacular part is the chorus ‘Sind Blitze, sind Donner’, the most dreaded thunderstorm in the history of music. In a two-choir stereo effect, one can hear the thunder and lightning darting from one side to the other, whilst the word ‘Abgrund’ (‘abyss’) heralds a textbook example of a general pause. A particularly terrifying scene is depicted in the tenor recitative characterised by a rising and falling melodic line following the death of Jesus: ‘der Vorhang im Tempel zerriss in zwei Stück von oben an bis unten aus’ (‘The veil of the temple was torn in two pieces from top to bottom’). The tenor voice even drops a fathomless depth of two octaves to the lowest note of the basso continuo. In his immeasurable wrath, God makes the earth tremble. Rocks cleave, graves crack open, and the saints who had lain at rest rise up. The basso continuo fires a salvo of 32nd notes to add force to the earthquake. One hundred and ninety such notes, to be precise.
Flourishing tradition
Bach’s St Matthew Passion is certainly imposing, but it is its penetrating humanity and quiet drama that renders it one of the most moving depictions of the suffering of Christ in Western history. Which makes it all the more remarkable that for a long time it had been forgotten completely, along with virtually all other compositions by Bach. Not until 1870, a hundred and fifty years after its first performance, was Bach’s Great Passion first performed in the Netherlands, by Toonkunst Rotterdam under the baton of Woldemar Bargiel. It was conductor Willem Mengelberg
of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw who was the great driving force behind the work from 1899 onwards. Parallel to this, the Grote Kerk in Naarden emerged as a true place of pilgrimage for Bach’s Passion. Nowadays, throughout the Netherlands, thousands of singers and musicians are busy during each Lent with dozens of performances of the St Matthew and the St John to a huge public. The tradition for the Passion is flourishing as never before.
Spectacular is the chorus ‘Sind Blitze, sind Donner’, the most dreaded thunderstorm in the history of music.
Bach waned the music of his Passion to be able to connect with all of us through its clarity and directness; his St Matthew Passion succeeds in this to a sublime level. Its unique combination of beauty, emotion and contemplation in text and music keeps interest in the work alive. The composer must have been aware of the greatness of his work, but can hardly have foretold that one day it would be described as ‘the Gospel according to Bach’. In 1985 the Argentine-German composer Mauricio Kagel wrote: ‘You could almost draw a comparison between the unique significance of the figure of Mozes and the position that Bach holds as the symbolic forefather of composers and the summation of music for the listener. It is possible that not all musicians believe in God, but they do all believe in Bach.’
Clemens Romijn
Lore Binon • soprano
Born: Blanden, Belgium
Education: violin at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, voice with Beatrijs De Vos, master (magna cum laude) at the Conservatory of Barcelona, further studies in Amsterdam with Valérie Guillorit
Subsequently: solo appearances with Budapest Festival Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Il Gardellino, Freiburger Barockorchester, B’rock Orchestra, Anima Eterna, a.o.
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2012
Jonathan Cohen • conductor
Born: Manchester, England
Current position: Music Director Les Violons du Roy, Artistic Director Tetbury Festival and Handel and Haydn Society, Artistic Advisor
London Handel Festival
Education: Clare College, Cambridge
Guest appearances: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Mozarteum Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, a.o. Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2021
Hugh Cutting • countertenor
Born: Oxford, England
Education: Royal College of Music
International Opera Studio (Tagore Gold Medal)
Awards: Kathleen Ferrier Award (2021), BBC New Generation Artist (2022–25)
Concert appearances: Collegium Vocale Ghent, Orchestra of St Luke’s, Wiener Symphoniker, Monteverdi Choir, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The English Concert, Les Arts Florissants, Il Pomo d’Oro Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2025
Photo: Marco Borggreve
Photo: Olivia da Costa
Photo: Matthias Schellens
Peter Gijsbertsen • tenor
Born: Hardenberg, The Netherlands
Education: Utrecht Conservatory (cum laude) with Harry Peeters
Awards: Glyndebourne Festival John Christie Award 2007, Lieder Prize International Vocal Competition ’s-Hertogenbosch 2012, Dutch Music Award 2018
Solo appearances: Royal Philharmonic, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, a.o.
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2009
Stuart Jackson • tenor
Born: London, England
Education: Biological Sciences in Oxford, choral scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, voice at the Royal Academy of Music with Ryland Davies
Subsequently: solo appearances with Philharmonia Orchestra, Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Dutch Radio Philharmonic, Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, Les Talens Lyriques Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2025
Neal Davies • bass
Born: Newport, Wales
Education: voice at King’s College, London and the Royal Academy of Music
Awards: Cardiff Singer of the World Competition Lieder Prize (1991)
Solo appearances: Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Gabrieli Consort, The English Concert, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2025
Photo: Gerard Collett
Photo: Maurice Lammerts van Bueren
Photo: Gerard Collett
Laurens Collegium • chorus
Founded: 2002 by Barend Schuurman
Present conductor: Wiecher Mandemaker
Repertoire: music for chamber choir from all period styles
Co-operations: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Residentie Orkest with conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Marcus Creed, Stéphane Denève, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Lahav Shani, and Jaap van Zweden, projects with Laurens Organist Hayo Boerema
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2011
Roderick Williams • bass
Born: London, England
Education: choral Scholar in Oxford (Christ Church and Magdalen College), voice at the Guildhall School of Music, Londo
Awards: Royal Philharmonic Society Singer of the Year 2016, Order of the British Empire Solo appearances: San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, London Symphony Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort, Le Concert Spirituel, The Sixteen Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2025
Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderkoor
Founded: 2005 by Caro Kindt
Conductor: Anaïs de la Morandais and Pia Pleijsier
Today: part of Nieuw Vocaal Amsterdam, a classical vocal training program with 300 pupils aged 4 to 21
Partners: Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Conservatory of Amsterdam, Cappella Amsterdam
Awards: First Prize Summa cum Laude European Youth Music Festival (2024)
Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2018
Photo: Theo Williams
Photo: Laurens Vocaal
Photo: NAK
